Vieux Carre

GRADE: B-

By Tennesee Williams. Directed By Austin Pendleton. At the Pearl Theatre Company. (CLOSED)

For it's final show at its St. Mark's Space, the Pearl Theatre has also chosen to do their first Tennesee Williams play. And not just any Tennesee Williams' play, a late-period work that would be notorious for its initial reception were it not instead largely forgotten. Vieux Carre, an auto-biographical, somewhat impressionist quasi-sequel to The Glass Managerie has critics split. NYTheatre, Backstage and Variety are grateful for the opportunity to discover a hidden diamond in the rough while Theatremania and CurtainUp maintain that there are reasons why some plays remain obscure.

NYTheatre A
(Martin Denton) The Pearl Theatre Company, wrapping up their 25th season, is giving audiences a chance to savor and ponder and wrap themselves up in this lesser known Williams piece. It turns out to be a shiny diamond that somehow got overlooked, hovering as it was in the shadow of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire and those other famous plays. Do not miss your chance to see it, in an affecting production that's been brilliantly staged by Austin Pendleton.

Backstage A-
(David Sheward) Heartbreaking isolation is what Williams wanted to capture in this autobiographical work and director Austin Pendleton sensitively exposes it like a physician treating a charity ward full of society's outcasts... Despite these echoes of past works and some overwrought sex scenes, Williams' trademark compassion for the weary and the lost shines through. The Pearl company illuminates their struggles with intensity and restraint.

Variety B+
(Marilyn Stasio) Hard to believe it took the Pearl, the very model of a responsible classical repertory company, 25 years to do a Tennessee Williams play. Tardy though it may be, this staging of Vieux Carre -- produced in 1977 and rarely seen since -- is a well-chosen example of how an enterprising rep house can serve a bit of nouvelle cuisine to faithful subscribers nourished on Shakespeare and Shaw. By salting the resident company with guest thesps from other venues, visiting director Austin Pendleton also provides a piquant taste of the interactive dynamic in this most theatrical of theater towns.

Time Out New York B-
(Diane Snyder) The Pearl Theatre Company demonstrates that gems like Vieux Carré, which lasted only 17 performances on Broadway in 1977, contain a lyrical luster—especially in Austin Pendleton’s affecting and engaging revival. ...Despite bits of awkward staging (sending the actors through the audience for exits and entrances), Pendleton and his cast find the heartbreak in Williams’s “shadowy occupants.” They just don’t always bring them to light.—

TheaterMania D+
(Adam R. Perlman) Unfortunately, while Vieux Carré certainly feels like Tennessee Williams, it just doesn't feel like a play. In his other works, Williams builds intricate drama amidst decaying Southern atmosphere; but Vieux Carré is simply all atmosphere. The evening is essentially a series of short stories linked by location and an all-but invisible narrator... Beyond eliciting the mostly admirable acting, director Austin Pendleton hasn't done the production many favors. Working with set designer Harry Feiner (and with the theater's limited vertical height), the action is largely set on or about a center stage bed forced into yeoman's duty (now it's The Writer's room, now the hallway, now the young lovers', and so on). The unfortunate effect is the feeling that the action revolves around The Writer, rather than that he rattles around the outskirts, watching and wanting. As a result, we're made all the more aware of the lack of central drama in the play.

CurtainUp D+
(Elyse Sommer) While Helmer Austin Pendleton has gone out of his way to recreate the atmosphere of the boarding house where Williams stayed just long enough to absorb this mother lode of inspiration, his directorial ideas don't always work. I can appreciate why he chose to have the various rooms in the boarding house on one level and without any visible dividers to differentiate between the various rooms. Having the characters move upstage when not part of the action so that the one center stage bedroom serves as Mrs. Wire's, Jane's, Nightingale's and the narrator's room fits the dreamy atmosphere of the mature narrator evoking memories from long ago. I suppose Pendleton's enclosing that single set with a doorless back, so that the actors keep entering and exiting via the two aisles also makes sense in terms of emphasizing the connection between the shabby, dead-to-life interior and the life pulsing outside. However, without a trace of anything to suggest New Orleans (a projection of the street on that bare enclosure might have helped) there's a lack of atmosphere and, all that up and down the aisle movement tends to be distracting to the point of annoyance. The cast too is uneven.

NYTR A 13; BS A- 12; V B+ 11; TONY B- 9; TM D+ 5; CU D+ 5; TOTAL: 55/6 = 9.2 (B-)

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Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire

GRADE: B-

By Mark Sam Rosenthal. Directed by Todd Parmley. SoHo Playhouse. (CLOSED)

Mark Sam Rosenthal's solo show, a hit at last year's NY International Fringe Festival, imagines the Tennessee Williams heroine picking through the ruins of flood-ravaged N'awlins. Some critics warmed to Rosenthal's politically incorrect drag aesthetic, and saw it as a sincere tribute to his native region, while others considered it a pretty weak cocktail.

Backstage A
(David Sheward) Mark Sam Rosenthal, who wrote this sharp solo show and plays Blanche, has given his heroine three dimensions. Though she is a derivative figure, often quoting Tennessee Williams' original dialogue, Rosenthal's Blanche has compassion, courage, and an indomitable will to survive. He performs her as a complete person, not just a drag creation. Rosenthal captures the style of the original script with delightful embellishments on contemporary events...This Blanche is both a loving tribute to a dazzling character and an unforgiving political commentary.

Time Out NY A
(Billie Cohen) Mark Sam Rosenthal has dreamed up a thoughtful, laugh-out-loud story based on one film icon’s descent into reality: hilarious, a little bit heartbreaking and (at the risk of adding another blurbable adjective) really smart...A Baton Rouge native with a personal connection to the storm, Rosenthal dons various blond wigs to match Blanche’s mood swings and indelicately jokes about race, poverty and government ineptitude. He’s a convincing impersonator, extrapolating a familiar character into new but logical territory...Like all great comedy, it’s funny because it’s true—and even better because it’s so absurd.

Nytheatre.com A
(J Jordan) Blanche is the same Blanche we've known and loved—alone, victimized, defenseless, vulnerable—or is she?...My initial fears that this show would be charming but campy were easily assuaged by the triumphant Rosenthal and smart, snappy director Todd Parmley who has resisted the cliches of a man in drag in a dream role. Instead they develop Blanche into a real person with real fears and a truly dire predicament...The real star of the designer show, though, may just be the wigs...created by J. Jared Janas and Rob Greene...Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire is at once funny and strange, and, yes, sad.

The New York Times B
(Anita Gates) If you are an admirer of Blanche DuBois, you know her voice when you hear it. And Mark Sam Rosenthal has captured it in his one-act...So is “Blanche Survives Katrina,” written and performed by a white Southern male, racist? It certainly flirts with offense, ridiculing black characters’ names and being flippant about poverty and violence...Most of the time, luckily, the joke is on Blanche, clueless about the changed world...But “Blanche Survives Katrina,” which aspires to be something more than a drag sketch, never fully takes shape...It has an affably nutty festival aura, but the core is missing.

Talk Entertainment C+
(Oscar E. Moore) What an excellent idea for an absurd, off-the-wall, quasi docu-drama with serious comic overtones: having one of the theatres best known heroines, Blanche DuBois...plopped right down in the middle of hurricane Katrina...Good idea gone wrong...There are moments of pure hilarity and moments of pure pathos and lots of lulls in between. I was confused as to whether he’s Blanche or a guy who thinks he’s Blanche. I expected to see a full blown Blanche make an entrance. Disappointed was I...Blanche has some very tough and racist things to say about her fellow refugees “they all looked like someone’s maid and yet the place was filthy.”

Theatermania C
(Dan Balcazo) Its one-joke premise wears thin quickly and the solo show feels far too long at just 70 minutes...Rosenthal's performance is animated, but never reaches the over-the-top campy heights which would make the show more engaging, nor the tragic depths that would make us feel for Blanche's plight. Moreover, as Angelina Margolis' costume design does not provide him with any kind of feminine clothing--he's dressed in a tank top and camouflage shorts for the majority of the performance--Rosenthal also faces an uphill battle in creating a successful illusion of inhabiting Blanche DuBois. His best moment is late in the play, as Blanche addresses a gay and lesbian Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It's both funny and sad, even if it isn't as poignant as Rosenthal probably intended.

New Theater Corps C
(Ilana Novick) Ends up dissolving into a weak parody of an iconic character, failing to add insight into either the character of Blanche or the horrifying events she and so many others faced during Hurricane Katrina. The tiny set conveys the wreckage Blanche walks through on the way to the Superdome: jackets and scarves draped listlessly over a Do Not Enter sign that is sadly reminiscent of FEMA’s message post-hurricane...At best, Blanche Survives Hurricane Katrina is light-hearted camp: she refers to herself as the “au lait” in a “sea of café,” and runs, flustered and furious, to her social worker after hearing her temporary roommate’s favorite song, “My Humps”...Rosenthal’s idea is a good one—using Blanche’s devotion to alcohol, make-up, and men as a way to defiantly slap glamour on an extremely unglamorous event. However, his execution isn’t glamorous, it’s just trashy.

Offoffonline D
(Edward Karam) A dramatic stream-of-consciousness effort that not everyone may follow as Blanche encounters an assortment of characters and experiments with crack (and indulges in alcohol). Blanche Survives Katrina… isn’t a drag show, though it reeks of camp. Rosenthal doesn’t trying [sic] to disguise his masculinity...The script is merely a meditation on the character in different circumstances, and one may surmise that Blanche embodies poor New Orleans itself...Anyone who attends Rosenthal's sequel may well decide that Stanley had every right to put Blanche away.

Backstage A 13; Nytheatre.com A 13; TONY A 13; The New York Times B 10; Talk Entertainment C+ 8; Theatermania C 7; New Theatre Corps C 7; Offoffonline D 4; 75/8=9.38 (B-)

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Ten Blocks on the Camino Real

GRADE: B-

By Tennessee Williams. Directed by David Herskovitz. Target Margin at the Ohio Theatre. CLOSED.

Target Margin's revival of the one-act warmup for Williams' much-unloved 1953 phantasmagoria Camino Real is embraced by some critics as an interesting experimental effort, artfully staged, although a louder chorus of detractors range from politely puzzled to downright dimissive. Among the latter is Variety's Marilyn Stasio, whose assertion that Camino Real represents Williams' "single bold attempt to expand his style and vision" seems pretty cruelly dismissive of the writer's post-1963 output.

Village Voice A-
(Alexis Soloski) This series of 10 surrealistic scenes originally received a workshop from Elia Kazan in 1948 and informed Williams's 1953 Broadway flop, Camino Real (also directed by Kazan)...In some dastardly tropical clime, an American boxer named Kilroy (Satya Bhabha)...flaunts bravado, a pair of golden gloves, and a terminal cardiac condition. "I got a heart in my chest as big as the head of a baby," he announces to all...Target Margin has a big heart as well, approaching the middling dialogue with its usual mix of smarts, brio, and very silly sound cues. Director Herskovits doesn't trouble to make sense of the script, taking a cheerful attitude toward its poetic excesses. That's likely for the best.

New York Times B+
(Wilborn Hampton) “Ten Blocks on the Camino Real” is more a collection of notes for a play than a play itself, a pastiche of scenes (what Williams called blocks) that the playwright expanded and increased to 16 for the final version. The director David Herskovits has mounted a lively and energetic staging at the Ohio Theater in SoHo, but most of the brief vignettes are so slight it is difficult to find a coherent thread tying them together. While enigmatic, the full-length play contains some of Williams’s most poetic imagery, and a sampling of it can be found in “Ten Blocks"...Satya Bhabha gives a fine performance as Kilroy, by turns angry and frightened.

CurtainUp B+
(Les Gutman) While the play's surrealism might have been off-putting to Broadway audiences, there's a sensibility here that's very familiar to those who know and appreciate what Target Margin does...David Herskovits has assembled an able group, headed by the engaging Satya Bhabha...What's even more interesting is that, even at its roughest, the lyricism and symbolism with which Williams saturates all of his plays are very much in evidence, even though without much connective tissue in the form of plot or character development. Is this, as Kazan suggested, one of Williams's best? Probably not. Yet I was pleased to see this spirited production in this compressed form.

Backstage B+
(David Sheward) David Herskovits, the company's artistic director, accentuates the bizarre aspects of the script by using exaggerated sounds and employing a cast of six to play all the roles, sometimes even sharing them — the gypsy is played by a male and a female actor. The gimmicks, unfortunately, sometimes overshadow Williams' lyrical poetry...On the plus side, Herskovits has for the most part directed his actors to play their roles without heightening the symbolism...Satya Bhabha endows Kilroy with a boyish charm as he fights against the forces of darkness and greed.

Theatermania B
(Andy Propst) An existential fantasia that reads and plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone written by Salvador Dali. But while artistic director David Herskovits has given the long-neglected work a respectable staging, he hasn't come up with a fully satisfying one...Surprisingly some of Herskovits' adventurousness seems to have been diluted here. Indeed, as the play unfolds, Herskovits and company serve up Williams' fantastical tale in an almost surprisingly straightforward manner...Not surprisingly, Williams' work pulsates with lyricism, and there are times when the poetry is delivered with haunting crispness.

Nytheatre.com C+
(Kelly Aliano) The play operates as a surrealistic dream—or nightmare—seemingly manifested by (or for) Kilroy, an American former prizefighter, forced to quit boxing because of heart trouble. His heart, he claims, "is as big as the head of a baby" and cannot withstand any stress of any kind...The entirety of the space is used in clever and unique ways. Williams's writing is beautiful but there does not seem to be any overarching throughline to tie the poetic riffs together tightly enough to constitute a dramatic plot.

Variety C
(Marilyn Stasio) While Target Margin does an amusing job of visualizing "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real"...the company doesn't show much interest in--or aptitude for--exploring what lies beneath its surreal exterior. And let's not even talk about the lack of acting chops...The cellar of the Ohio Theater in Soho is a great place to put on Williams' early attempt to write an experimental play. Under the guiding hand of helmer (and company a.d.) David Herskovits, Target Margin's design staff has transformed the space into a festive setting for a Mexican-flavored nightmare.

AM New York C
(Matt Windman) David Herskovits’ low-budget staging, which tries to instill a carnival atmosphere into the cavernous SoHo Theater, is lively and well meant but not very satisfying. His six-person cast is forced to play multiple roles, move slowly and indulge in big and broad gesturing, making a difficult play even more confusing. Only Satya Bhabha, who plays the young American boxer Kilroy, gains the audience’s interest. What’s most unclear of all is why Target Margin bothered to use this early draft of the play instead of the more fully realized and finished “Camino Real.” Was it totally for the sake of novelty? In any case, this production fails to make a compelling case for bringing it back from the dead.

Time Out NY D+
(Pamela Newton) More disjointed than the final version, this short play lacks the dramatic tension and rich characters that usually make Williams’s work so absorbing. Its shortcomings are only emphasized by David Herskovits’s direction, which moves at a lagging pace and exaggerates the weirdness of the piece...One genuine delight is Jim Breitmeier’s perky sound design, its cinematic effects injecting much-needed shots of energy. But even if the rest of the production were as lively, Ten Blocks would still serve as a warning: Discarded works of great masters are sometimes best left on the cutting-room floor.

Theatre News Online D+
(Sandy MacDonald) Some prototypes are best left to the archives. Judging from Target Margin Theater's amateurish, over-literal mounting, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real--the 1946 precursor of 1953's grandly surrealist Camino Real--is one such work. The company, directed by David Herskovitz, pounces on the meager portentous script like dogs on a bone--or, to use a more Williamsian simile, scavengers on a dung heap...As the temptress Esmeralda, Purva Bedi contributes a lithe body and refreshing directness--she alone among the cast doesn't seem intent on packing Cosmic Import into her lines...Otherwise, between the actors' posing and beseeching, and a sadistically amped sound track, it's not an enjoyable or especially enlightening experience.

Village Voice A- 12; New York Times B+ 11; CurtainUp B+ 11; Backstage B+ 11; Theatermania B 10; Nytheatre.com C+ 8; Variety C 7; AM New York C 7; TONY D+ 5; Theatre News Online D+ 5; TOTAL: 87/10=8.7 (B-)

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Out Cry

GRADE: C/C-

By Tennessee Williams. Dir. Thom Sesma. National Asian American Theatre Company at the Abingdon Theatre. (CLOSED)

There was a remarkable level of consensus about this revival of Tennessee Williams' late play, about a pair of actor-siblings abandoned by their company and their audience on tour, who nevertheless enact a play, also about an unhinged brother and sister. Though a few critics highlighted some of Williams' language and partly lauded the performance of Mia Katigbak, Aaron Riccio of That Sounds Cool probably best summed up the critical reaction by noting that while the fictional "audience" has left the characters onstage, the real surprise is that the actual audience doesn't walk out on this production.

Village Voice B-
(James Hannahan) Out Cry has the disquieting atmosphere of a great artist imprisoned with an invalid muse, publicly mutilating himself. That's actually the good news. NAATCO's re-animation of this haunting coda evokes the proper tawdriness, especially Czerton Lim's cluttered set, but the play needs virtuoso actors to feign mediocrity. Mia Katigbak comes close; Eduardo Machado doesn't feign.

CurtainUp C
(Gregory A. Wilson) Experimental and edgy...It doesn't really work, but it's unclear who's really to blame...Though, taken as a whole, the acting isn't up to the play's challenge, this too is an uncertain verdict, because director Thom Sesma content to let the text wander on without real distinctiveness or message.

The New York Times C-
(Wilborn Hampton) Under Thom Sesma’s direction, this production is curiously slow-paced and flat. Mia Katigbak and Eduardo Machado present an odd couple as the siblings trapped by a hazy past and fearful of an uncertain future, afraid to leave the theater even to go to the market. Ms. Katigbak has moments of the imperious diva, but at times she seems lost in the obscurity of Williams’s text. Mr. Machado embodies the playwright more than the actor in Felice, animated in some scenes but strangely anemic in others.

Time Out NY C-
(Diane Snyder) In this bleak and biting late work—which lasted just two weeks on Broadway in 1973—Williams goes existential in an attempt to deconstruct the drama. Even if the result is more an intriguing metatheatrical addendum to a great body of work than a fully realized play, the heft of this National Asian American Theatre Company production is hampered by Thom Sesma’s wobbly production.

Nytheatre.com C-
(Michael Criscuolo) The play contains plenty of Williams's trademark savage intensity and beautiful, poetic strangeness, and is a potent commentary on the easily blurred lines between fiction and reality. Unfortunately, all of those qualities get underserved in the National Asian American Theatre Company's current pedestrian revival of the play. Marred by unsure direction and erratic acting, NAATCO's Out Cry limps and dodders where it should soar, and hums politely where it should electrify...It's as if the entire situation is just a minor inconvenience for both characters, instead of a matter of life or death.

That Sounds Cool D+
(Aaron Riccio) There are moments in Out Cry that are so poetic that they conjure up dreams of Summer and Smoke. But Felice, upon seeing his sister regress to a childish fascination with soap-bubbles, points out that “they break,” and Machado, in an inappropriately Kowalski moment, swats the bubbles down, channeling an anger that he doesn’t actually feel. In other words, even well-scripted moments on the page, of which there are not many, end up dying by the time they float onto the stage.

Village Voice B- 9; CurtainUp C 7; The New York Times C- 6; Time Out NY C- 6; Nytheatre.com C- 6; That Sounds Cool D+ 5; TOTAL: 6.5 (C/C-)

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